A colleague of mine once scolded me

Possibilities, Vol. 1, No. 8 September, 2002

Quote From Moshe: “ Functional Integration turns to the oldest elements of our sensory system – touch, the feelings of pull and pressure; the warmth of the hand, its caressing stroke. The person becomes absorbed in sensing the diminishing muscular tonus, the deepening and the regularity of breathing, abdominal ease, and improved circulation in the expanding skin. The person senses his most primitive, consciously forgotten patterns and recalls the well-being of a growing young child.” The Elusive Obvious, p. 121

A Better Description of the Method

A colleague of mine once scolded me. “You brag about being able to give such good Feldenkrais Lessons, but you describe the Method so badly.” She argued that the Feldenkrais Method is not a way of teaching people how to move better. This was her definition:

“The Feldenkrais Method is a communication system using movement to awake awareness and alternative ways of action.”

I really like her definition, and I want to talk about it.” If I told you that the Method was a “communication system,” you might nod, understanding the gist of what I was saying. But if you tried to tell someone else the same thing, they’d probably look strangely at you. “What? A communication system? Like the telephone? Like the internet? How can a body-working thing be a communcation system?? What has communication got to do with my health?”

Tell them this: A Feldenkrais teacher uses movement to communicate with you. Not diagnoses, not exercises, not words, but movement. The movement is communicated to you. It is not demonstrated to you, explained to you, or set up as a goal. It was Moshe Feldenkrais’ brilliant insights that created the best way to communicate, with movement, better options for living and accomplishing your dreams. This is the Feldenkrais Method.

Communication is a two-way street. I don’t have a set of ideals waiting for you before you come in through my door. I’m not going to show you a chart of the perfect way to move and say, “Look, see here? That’s where you fall short.” That wouldn’t be communication, it would be giving out instructions. Instead, I listen to you; not just to your words, but to your movement. I take in what you’re doing, notice how you sit down on my table, which leg you lean on, how well you can turn your head to look at me depending on what side I’m on. After I listen, I communicate back to you, through movement, what I’ve noticed.

While you’re lying down, I take your left arm and I gently lift it towards the ceiling, because that rotates your body to the right. With this gesture, I’m using movement to say, “I noticed you don’t like to turn to the right as much. Do you notice this too, when I use your arm as the impetus to turn?” I may roll your head to the right, saying, with movement, “How about when I use your head as the impetus to turn?” I may press upon your right hip through your right knee, saying, with movement, “How well do you turn to the right when your hip is involved? Does that make it easier?”

If I said all these things to you with words, you might find it less effective. If you have no awareness of your ability of lack of ability to turn to the right such words would be meaningless to you. But if I move with you in such a way that you can feel the difficulty, if I can call your awareness to it, then you can process these questions directly with your nervous system. You can feel the options that you may not have felt before, and you can contemplate alternative ways of action.

You may not have a conscious understanding of what’s going on. You may not recognize with your literal mind what I’m communicating to you through movement. But your nervous system is designed to process this information without your conscious control. The nervous system goes over the head of conscious thought so that in the event of an emergency which occurs too quickly for a conscious response, your body can protect itself. As a baby, before you have any conscious understanding of yourself at all, the nervous system functions to teach you how to make the first essential movements: How to nurse, how to roll, how to reach, how to crawl, how to walk. Because I work directly with your nervous system, I can communicate with you in an unimpeded fashion, using a medium that is natural to you. You are designed as a human being to learn through movement, and it can be the most effective means of communication between two people.

To insure that you are listening to what I am communicating to you, I have to make the experience pleasant. I often have to go gently, slowly, giving you time to process what you are experiencing. If I move you quickly, it must be with ease. You learn best if your experience is pleasant. That’s why I’ll never take you into pain, never ask you to stretch yourself, and never tell you to push harder or try try try! I’m not dictating, I’m communicating with you. And I have to keep listening even while I’m working. If I find that you resist moving your arm to the ceiling, I won’t force it. I’ll either move the arm within an easy range, seek a smooth way around the difficulty, or show you how to turn in another way, with your head or your hip or whatever is easiest. I’m listening to you while I’m talking to you; this is only possible when one communicates in movement!

When you understand this about the Method, you will understand why it is different from Yoga or chiropractic or pilates or crystal healing. The marriage of movement and communication, rarely experienced in any setting, can produce results for you that may have eluded you for your entire life. Sometimes, in order to get past a problem, all you need is someone to talk with, someone who will listen.

Be well.

Next Week: Feldenkrais and Difficult Moments